She glanced around her. The bot’s announcement had dimmed the chatter throughout the shuttle cabin. Most of the hundred-plus passengers were allowing the autostraps to secure them in their seats. The frolicking delights that had characterized the earlier part of the flight, the pleasurable challenges of floating and eating in zero gravity and the awkward adaptation to zero-G toilets, had morphed into hushed anticipation.
Bel felt it too, the thrill of arriving in a new place. Bookmarking the paperback, she tabbed her seat monitor to display the forward view. The Colonies still appeared to be far away, a jumble of flimsy glass needles positioned at odd angles to one another, linear jewels gleaming against the inky blackness. But she knew they were closing fast.
Soon the shuttle would begin a gradual deceleration in preparation for docking. Those needles would grow and resolve into massive rotating habitats, their gravitationally stable inner surfaces already home to millions of settlers. They would dock in a port of Irrya, the newly named capital of the Colonies. It was the largest cylinder of them all, more than a hundred kilometers from end to end.
She changed the monitor to an aft view, gazed back at the ball of the Earth. At the moment it was cleaved perfectly in two, halves of sunlight and shadow. She marveled at the sight, as she had frequently throughout the flight. Even though most of the globe was enshrouded by the smog, it was still inspiring to realize that they all ultimately shared this retreating world. If only every person on the planet was able to see their home from this perspective. Perhaps then they’d have realized that they should have treated their birth sphere with greater tenderness.
But we didn’t. We failed the world.
Bel supposed there was a chance – there was always a chance – that Earth would recover from centuries of abuse and begin a restoration. But in her heart, she didn’t believe in such a scenario. Vast new horrors were being inflicted upon the planet every week.
In the month leading up to her shuttle lifting off, the newsphere was choked with what was being described as the single worst bio disaster in history. The death toll ultimately was projected to dwarf the twenty million or so who’d perished in this past winter’s Valentine’s Day attacks.
This newest disaster differed from most previous ones in that its cause had been accidental and not a deliberate assault by the Paratwa or some terrorist group. A band of entomological geneticists, working on behalf of insect rights activists, had retooled the DNA of carpenter ants to enable better resistance to pesticides.
But when the new ants were released into the wild, a flaw in their DNA caused their natural predators – birds, moles and anteaters – to sicken. The culprit, a rapidly mutating virus, had cycled up through the food chain, spreading with frightening speed throughout the human – and binary – populations. With a ninety-eight percent fatality rate, the latest estimates suggested that by the time the pandemic peaked, upwards of a billion people would be dead.
Bel felt sad thinking about all those lives lost. But it was the safety of the friends and family she’d left behind that worried her the most, especially her parents. They hadn’t approved of their only child being so far away and she’d been unable to convince them to come with her. Like a significant majority of the population, they refused to even consider abandoning their birth world for a new and uncertain life in the Colonies. And their unshakeable aversion to space flight precluded their even coming for a visit.
She’d promised regular holocommutes. But naturally her parents wanted more, wanted to see her in the flesh. She’d vowed to return home from time to time. But given the increasing dangers and uncertainties of life on Earth, she knew that such a pledge might be difficult if not impossible to keep.
She forced her thoughts toward less depressing matters. Her resignation as E-Tech director had come as a surprise to many of the regents. In the wake of the events that exposed Codrus, the board had so praised her acumen and bravery that they likely would have appointed her director for life had she desired. But considering the escalating tensions in the world and E-Tech’s seeming inability to stop the madness, she saw a different future for herself.
At least she’d been able to accomplish some long-overdue housecleaning before her departure, including forcing Bull Idwicki’s retirement for his numerous security lapses, not the least of which was failing to properly vet the traitorous Rory Connors. The board also had approved Bel’s recommendation that Pablo Dominguez be appointed her replacement. He’d make a good director, at least for whatever amount of time the planet had left to it.
The Colonies symbolized humanity’s future now. Perhaps Star-Edge did as well; the great spaceships would soon depart Earth orbit to voyage beyond the solar system. But Star-Edge was no longer of any notable concern to her. In Bel’s new position as intercolonial government coordinator, her focus would be to make sure that E-Tech was well represented. Her job offered a grand opportunity to bring the organization’s mission to the forefront, free it from much of the baggage that had limited its effectiveness on Earth. She would be one of only a handful of individuals responsible for configuring the new government, which was to be known as the Council of Irrya.
She would use whatever clout she had to ensure E-Tech a pivotal place on that council and to make sure the organization became a major force for putting real restrictions on the limitless sci-tech development that had doomed the world. If she could accomplish that, the Colonies just might have a real shot at generations of peace and stability.
It would take a great deal of hard work of course, and more than a little luck. There would be enormous challenges, vast new problems to solve. For the foreseeable future, immigration would be one of her primary concerns.
Until fairly recently, and despite the widespread sentiments that Earth likely faced an apocalypse, only the hardiest adventurers and early-adapter types had applied for Colonial citizenship. But that had changed dramatically over the past year. Now there were hundreds of applications for every available spot in the cylinders, a ratio increasing at such an alarming rate that it threatened to become a runaway geometric progression.
The flood of those wanting to immigrate enabled the Colonies to select the best and brightest. But it also provided more opportunities for Paratwa infiltrators. One of the most vital aspects of her new job would be a review of immigration procedures to make sure that not a single binary or servitor made it past customs. If the Colonies were to succeed, they needed a fresh start, free of the Paratwa scourge.
She would also need to address the problem of the millions of spaceworkers employed to build the huge cylinders. The original expectation had been for them to return to Earth after construction was completed. But many of the workers were well aware that there might not be a viable planet to return to.
A quota system had been recently announced that would permit a few of the workers to apply for colonial citizenship. But that left the majority without any reasonable options, and their anger and resentment were building. A few loud and vocal leaders, led by a shuttle pilot named Ari Alexander, had emerged and had begun organizing the workers into clans. Some of the clans were even attempting to build their own rudimentary habitats.
Yet another important consideration in Bel’s new job would be dealing with the vast E-Tech archives that were still in the process of being transferred to the Colonies from multiple computer nets on Earth. The idea behind the archives was the preservation of every iota of human history in case the worst-case scenario did occur and the planet was lost. She’d also have oversight into the detoxing of the archives, weeding out any malignant programs that might have been surreptitiously planted.
A system also being set up to censor portions of the archives, especially those dealing with advanced technologies. Severe restrictions for access to those portions would need to be developed. It was a concept that fit nicely into E-Tech’s overall goal.
Some of the more radical elements within E-Tech believed that censoring didn’t go far enough, that much of the dat
a needed to be destroyed to prevent runaway sci-tech from ever again becoming a destructive force. That idea ran counter to Bel’s beliefs. Limiting access made sense, wholesale decimation did not. She would work to convince those radical elements that they needed to look beyond today, imagine a tomorrow where humans might have need of such science and technology. Perhaps there would even come a time when humanity gained enough wisdom not to self-destruct.
She sighed. Thinking about the range of problems ahead of her sometimes felt overwhelming. In addition to all those concerns, she’d have to adjust to the peculiarities of living on the inner surface of vast rotating cylinders. A high percentage of new colonists suffered from motion sickness brought on by the cylinders’ fast rotation rates. And apparently when it got so bad that you needed to throw up, your vomit could emerge in a curved stream.
But scarier than such physical quirks was the stark reality of heading into a world where she knew no one, a world full of strangers.
Not exactly true, she reminded herself. She’d have at least one friend in the Colonies. Olinda Shining, after six months in the cylinders, was already a seasoned veteran of colonial living. She’d be waiting when Bel emerged from customs. Olinda had promised to help her become familiarized with this strange new environment.
The thought of seeing Olinda again brought a smile. They’d kept in close touch. She’d watched numerous videos and holos of Ektora transitioning from helpless infant to exploring toddler. Even more impactful was Olinda’s professional growth. She’d parlayed a low-level position that Bel had arranged for her as an E-Tech inspector into the chief of her entire department.
Olinda was blossoming on the personal front as well. Just last month she’d become engaged to a distinguished policy adviser to Irrya’s fledgling intercolonial government, a man of Italian descent whose family for generations had been naming its children for cities in Italy. They’d already picked a name for their first offspring: Catania if a girl, Palermo if a boy. Bel looked forward to meeting and getting to know the prospective father, Milan Franco.
But thinking about Olinda inevitably induced a touch of sadness, for it turned her thoughts to Nick. She’d shed more than enough tears over him in the months since he and Gillian had gone into stasis. On more than a few occasions she’d chided herself for not fighting harder to preserve their relationship.
It wasn’t meant to be.
She’d repeated that phrase to herself so many times that it had become one of her newly minted mantras. Still, she knew that the pain of their parting would never be completely expunged. All she could hope to do to offset her personal agony was to remember the wonderful times they’d had together, as well as the pair of final good deeds Nick had arranged prior to Upton performing the SATSI surgery.
Nick had placed his entire fortune in a long-term trust fund. She’d urged him to keep at least some of it but he’d been adamant about giving it all away, laughingly insisting that wherever he and Gillian ended up, he’d figure out a way to make money.
“Better to dump it all,” he’d told her. “And hey, it’s going toward a worthy cause, right?”
The anonymous donation was to be used exclusively for the betterment of the Colonies, with a significant portion dedicated to E-Tech initiatives. His trust fund would go a long way toward improving the Colonies’ chances, as well as helping counter the efforts of La Gloria de la Ciencia. The proscience fanatics, now openly funded by a consortium of corporate empires, were pouring significant wealth into the cylinders in order to stake their claim on the idea that sci-tech development remain a limitless frontier.
Bel had no intention of allowing La Gloria de la Ciencia to triumph. The unfettered profit-progress cycle that had contributed to Earth’s destruction must not begin anew.
It stops here, it stops now.
As she recited the words – another of her mantras – she rubbed her hand across her belly. She wasn’t showing yet but Nick’s second good deed, a truly wondrous gift, was growing inside her.
Her son represented the real future, a boy who would grow up free of the jaded chaos of the planet, who would look upon the Earth merely as another object in the heavens, a distant blob of swirling gray, a thing to be studied in school. Bel could only hope that the indignities visited upon the world would serve as a lasting reminder to him and all the other colonial children, a reminder that their fragile environment required perpetual care, and that no greater honor existed than to serve as its stewards.
She took one final look at the Earth before switching back to the forward view, to the beckoning horizon that would become her new home.
Acknowledgments
This novel wouldn’t have been possible without the generosity and support of Etan Ilfeld, whose enthusiasm for the binary interlink phenomenon has stayed the course. A big shout out to Marc Gascoigne, Phil Jourdan, Penny Reeve, Mike Underwood and their team of celestial mechanics at Angry Robot Books for helping this author reach escape velocity. Special thanks to my most diligent agent, Mark Gottlieb of Trident Media Group, whose thoughtful direction early on contributed to making this book a reality. And kudos to Larry Rostant for his cover art, an evocative fusion of urban noir and menacing duality.
About the Author
Christopher Hinz wrote the Paratwa Saga, whose first book Liege-Killer won the Compton Crook Award for best first novel and earned Hinz a nomination for the John W Campbell Award for best new writer. He has worked as a newspaper reporter, technical administrator of a TV station, public relations writer, screenwriter, and comic book scripter for DC and Marvel. He orchestrates the creation of fantastic universes, a lifelong passion, from a wooded realm in south-eastern Pennsylvania.
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Double jeopardy
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An Angry Robot paperback original 2016
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Copyright © Christopher Hinz 2016
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Christopher Hinz asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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UK ISBN 978 0 85766 620 8
US ISBN 978 0 85766 621 5
EBook ISBN 978 0 85766 622 2
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
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This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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